Digital Fortress (Dan Brown) - Review

The National Security Agency (NSA) of United States secretly uses a supercomputer labelled as TRANSLTR to decrypt the codes. Using the brute force (hit and trial), TRANSLATR is supposed to break every code in the world within a few minutes. One day, the super computer encounters a mysterious code and it is unable to decode it. Susan Fletcher, a brilliant and beautiful mathematician and head cryptographer of NSA is called by the agency to look after it. What she doesn’t know is that the mysterious code known as the Digital Fortress holds the secrets that will leave everybody shocked when revealed.

Digital Fortress is the first book written by Dan Brown, one of my favorite authors. It’s ironic that I had not read the book till now. Probably, because I was too much interested in the Robert Langdon series and I could not materialize the idea of reading Brown with Langdon. But finally, I picked it up and it left me in awe.

The book has typical trademarks of Dan Brown all over but that is the reason why I love his books and it worked positively for me at least. The premise was interestingly set up and in no time, Brown threw in a lot of data to process. It was a chaos of codes, symbols and decryption. But it was enjoyable and intriguing.

The pace of the book particularly in the second section dropped. Things started stretching and the plot began losing the grip. Thankfully the graph went up pretty soon and the plot was taken by absolute thrills. A big secret is revealed a bit after half of the book and this is what blew my mind. It was a powerful revelation and the arrival of it that early in the book made me wonder what was next.

Believe me that Digital Fortress was all the more engrossing after that moment. Numerous twists and turns kept me reading further and further till I was finished with the entire book. But even when it was over, Dan Brown left me flabbergasted at the code that is mentioned in the last page. Well, I will talk about that code later.

Right now, I want to say that I loved reading Digital Fortress. It was gripping right till the end and kept me guessing. People often complain that he has used wrong facts about cryptology and that he has used nonexistent logics. Well, I’m not a cryptographer and I don’t care which details were messed up while he wrote the book. All I know is that he is able to create a tight atmosphere through his words and keeps the reader on the edge of his seat.

I know all of you have already read Digital Fortress but in case, like me, you have missed, it’s time to pick it up. It is an amazing thriller stylized with the signature of Dan Brown.

Regarding the code in the end of Digital Fortress, the code was as follows:

There are 128 chapters in the book. It is clear that each number refers to the respective chapters. You simply need to put the first letter of those chapters in place of the numbers and the code will become:

W - E - C - G - E - W - H - Y - A - A - I - O - R - T - N – U

Remember the Caesar Square from the book? Count the letters. They are 16. A perfect square. Now, you need to arrange them in a 4 x 4 square.

WEC G
EW HY
AAIO
RTNU

Read it upside down through the columns.

It says “WE ARE WATCHING YOU”.

Certainly, somebody, somewhere is watching you because there is no privacy in this digital world we are living in. An extra half star just for this easter egg in the end.